Ecstatic

I’ll get to Ecstasy (not what most of you are thinking) in a moment.

This is requiring some mental discipline but, I want to stick to my format and update you, first, on my puzzle assembly status. 

I always start a puzzle assembling the border. After the initial sort, as usual, I was missing some pieces. Actually, I found that I missed over 20 border pieces in the first attempt. Hindsight revealed the reason for so many misses. Speed! What made me think that efficient use of time had any relevance to puzzling? Last night, over 2 days, using about 5 hours, I completed the border. 

As for today’s thought puzzle;

At this moment, as I write this, I am temporarily unpuzzled. I’m simply ecstatic! 

I just watched today’s episode of CBS’s Sunday Morning, by far the best real journalism news show with facts, depth, humor, drama, pathos. They’re stealing my stuff! It was an episode featuring a retired NFL star using jigsaw puzzle assembly as therapy to relieve his symptoms from multiple concussions which aired on Dec. 7th, 2019, that initially inspired my interest in jigsaw puzzles and prompted me to buy and assemble the first jigsaw puzzle of my life.

Coupling my newly found fascination with puzzles to years of searching for the right outlet for my desire to write, my Puzzling blog was launched on 2/02/2020. (Here, I must digress. I do a lot of that. I’m a numbers guy. Note that my launch day comprises a great poker hand—four of a kind. Just luck?).

I will always wonder (maybe I am puzzled right now) what prompted me to choose Puzzling as my blog name which I did on the spur of the moment, on the phone with my Technical Support Manager, Victoria, AND finding that this website name had not been claimed.

Joan, my wife, after proofreading this post, lamented its lack of humor. Dear followers (all 5 of you): 

Indulge me on this one. I can’t help expressing my joy over the CBS telecast, After I calm down, and with new motivation recently provided by my new best buddy, Vito, you will see a return to dissecting real-life anecdotes, i.e. “40 Loaves for Jesus” in my next post. 

Or, The Sprinker (yes, “Sprinker”) Room sign on the back door of the Mega/Supermarket which I jog past daily. 

How about a new book, a biography entitled “Buford”, a 400 page single spaced book consisting of one very long sentence how a computer guy sits at a console for years, never using more physical effort than it takes to type or move a mouse, while gaining weight at a frightening rate, through the generous application of Cheetos and Mountain Dew which is brought to him intermittently by one of his daughters or his wife or the trained border collie, all of whom feel duty bound to feed the bread winner of the house, because, believe it or not, he gets paid for sitting, talking, typing, and mouse maneuvering in an effort to keep a golf cart company afloat which requires tremendous imagination as it is necessary to discreetly create computer problems in order to have enough activity to make it appear that his “work” has value. 

I’ll get back to the humor stuff but, that’s it for now.